Bede's Beat - Gloomy Sunday

Szomorú vasárnap was composed by Rezső Seress in 1933.

While the title of Seress' composition was translated into English as Gloomy Sunday, it was popularly known in both the U.S. and the U.K. as "the Hungarian suicide song" due to innumerable press accounts of people who cited the song in their suicide notes. 

The song was even locally banned by several radio stations in the interest of "public morals." Seress himself committed suicide in 1968,

Marozsán Erika: Szomorú vasárnap (Gloomy Sunday)

The first person to sing Gloomy Sunday in English was Paul Robeson in 1936,

Robeson's English-language version was quickly followed by many others, perhaps most famously, that recorded by Lady Day:in 1941:

Gloomy Sunday has been recorded in may different styles and remains part of the soundtrack -- and an essential entry in the songbook-- of the 1930s and 1940s, and is still performed to this day.

Charlie Adams: Gloomy Sunday

Björk: Gloomy Sunday

The Elephant in the Womb - A Poem for Asa Hutchinson

We're Baggers GOP.
We want to control your pu^^y.
We want to be like it's 1853.
Please elect us hopefully.
- timalways wrote this. 

"Governor Hutchinson has no business telling women in Arkansas where they can and cannot go for cancer screenings, birth control, HIV tests and other care," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

 In August, Hutchinson said the state would cut off contracts with Planned Parenthood because its values did not represent those of the people of Arkansas.

The Arkansas contracts involved services including nurse practitioners, pharmacy and family planning and were delivered through the Arkansas Medicaid program. No state funds were used for abortions, except in the case of incest, rape or when the life of the mother was at stake.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Editing by Sandra Maler)

If I wanted a legislator in my womb, I would fuck a Republican Governor. Best way to fuck Asa Hutchinson? VOTE! 

You can get the TShirt HERE and wear it in his face. I make no money at all from sales. 

Kim Davis? Spit Spot.

Happy Belated Birthday, Charlie Parker - Bede's Beat

Editor's Note: Bede was lost and now he's found. Huzzah!

It's a musical cliche to say that Charlie Parker changed the way we listen to music forever. It is also true.

In honor of his birthday, August 29, Bede's Beat presents a comparative listening set comprised of three of Parker's recordings of the same song -- Ray Noble's Cherokee -- which vividly illustrates the impact which Parker had upon the way we hear music and understand rhythm and harmonics today.

from 1941 with The Jay McShann Orchestra, the big band that first brought Parker to national attention:

from 1943, an home-recorded take on Cherokee -- This is bop at its birth:

from the famous Massey Hall Concert in Toronto in 1953, along with Dizzy Gillispie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach:

As a final point of comparison, here is the original recording of Cherokee by the composer's own band, The Ray Noble Orchestra, from 1938